GILROY – As thousands poured into Christmas Hill Park to
celebrate garlic, several people found a special someone to enjoy
the day with.
GILROY – As thousands poured into Christmas Hill Park to celebrate garlic, several people found a special someone to enjoy the day with.
Gena Sakahara did just that, four years ago. While working at the festival, she took a break and a man approached her and clearly was interested.
The two set up a date and a love blossomed. Sakahara will marry Fortune Gonzales Saturday on the anniversary of their first date.
“As the Garlic Festival happens to do, he got a little liquid encouragement in him and started talking with me,” Sakahara said.
As luck would have it, Gonzales is a garlic lover, a quality that scored points with Sakahara.
“We share a love for food,” Sakahara said. “I love cooking with garlic.”
Sakahara had known Gonzales from working at Gilroy High School where she was a teacher, softball coach and athletic director. Gonzales was a substitute and subbed for her class. Sakahara said she liked how he taught.
Finding love at the festival is not unique to Sakahara. While attending the Shaboom concert Sunday, Chris Ericksen, 20, and Courtney Pickel, 21, both of Gilroy saw each other and hit it off.
“We have just been having so much fun today,” Pickel said. The new couple were mostly paying attention to each other and left together.
“I am the garlic champion!” Ericksen declared.
Romance came in all styles and forms at the festival. Making the trip from Long Beach, Jyl James, 34, and Shannon Rex, 28, who have been together for two months, came to Gilroy just for the festival.
“We are having a blast,” said James about her first Garlic Festival. “We are having so much fun.”
The two women were free to go about their business without trouble from anyone.
“It has been pleasant; we’ve had very little static,” James said. “We took a trip back east where it wasn’t so pleasant.”
With the weather hot Sunday, it was a good day to buy ice cream and share it with a loved one.
Kris Mott, 19, from Morgan Hill said the ice cream hit the spot in more ways than one.
“(The ice cream) really fosters a romantic relationship, I say,” Mott said.
While Mott and his girlfriend, Mattie Smith, 17, also from Morgan Hill, enjoyed the ice cream together, Smith said it was too hot to enjoy much else.
“I find it a romantic atmosphere,” Mott said. “She doesn’t like it. She says it’s too hot.”
